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Mettlecraft Month is Here: “Imperium Armorum”
8th annual Mettlecraft Month is here! What’s Mettlecraft Month? Every November we push a bit harder, and ask a bit more more of ourselves, in our quest for true mettle. What’s mettle? Fighting aspect, physical endurance, unflagging determination, and resolute strength of body, mind and spirit.
Imperium Armorum is designed to build basic competency with a walking stick in just 1 month.
Week 1: Black Tie & Buckskin Basics
Week 2: Mortality, Sparring and Movement
Week 3: Grappling and Retention
Week 4: Impairment and Stressors
Mettle maker #483: Imperium Armorum Week 2 Mortality, Sparring and Movement
Note: If you missed last week, I’ve pasted it in below. These weeks build upon each other, so be like the baby tomato and “ketchup.”
Are you prepared to protect yourself from mortal danger? Do you have a relaxed and open attitude, keep your nose out of your cell phone, maintain a sense of wonder, curiosity, and engagement with regard to both people and the environment, and so on? Avoid dangerous areas? Keep your oil changed, tires inflated, and gas tank filled, and so on? Of course you do. That’s just common sense.
So, you would never deliberately walk into to a biker bar filled with ex-cons and meth dealers and start throwing your weight around, would you? Of course not. Anyone will tell you that doing so would put you in mortal danger.
Would you start smoking cigarettes and drinking yourself to sleep every night, stop exercising, and start eating fast food three meals a day? Of course not. You don’t have to be a doctor to know that doing so would put you in mortal danger.
You are a smart and capable martial artist. You know that to protect your body against mortal danger — threat of death by violence, ill health, and disease — you need arm yourself with the proper weapons: head, hands, feet, walking stick, healthy habits, danger avoidance, etc.
But what are you doing to protect yourself against mortal danger to your heart, mind, and soul? What are your weapons against the mortal danger of the evil within? Does it make sense for us to spend hundreds of hours per year on protecting our physical bodies and very little time on protecting our immortal souls from hell?
You may take the meaning of the world “hell” literally or figuratively. Or you may, as I do, take hell both literally and figuratively. “Hell” is the worst possible set of circumstances — either here or in the hereafter, or both. “Salvation,” on the other hand, is deliverance from hell.
Of interest to those who study the ars Martialis is the fact that the fathers of the early church were given to using warlike words and metaphors for our struggle against the Seven Deadly Sins — deadly because their continued commission leads down the road to eternal damnation: pride, wrath, envy, greed, gluttony, lust, and sloth. The Greek word translated as “sin” is hamartia which is an archery term for missing the mark with an arrow. And one of the first mentions of the Three Theological Virtues — our defenses against sin — are given to us by Saint Paul:
“Let us be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet that is hope for salvation” (1 Thessalonians 5:8).
The Three Theological Virtues
The theological virtues are so called "because they have God for their object…by them we are properly directed to Him, and…they are infused into our souls by God alone” (Aquinas). They are not invented by men for men, but placed in our minds, hearts, and souls by God for our good.
Faith. Accepting God in your thoughts (as a fact in history), desires (wanting what God wants not what you want), actions (behaving in a manner that accords with God’s teaching), and beliefs (knowing through prayer and communion that God is with you and loves you). Trusting in God that good will triumph over evil in the end.
Hope. Trusting that, with God’s help, one may attain life everlasting. Knowing that “With God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).
Love. Loving God as the highest possible aim with the understanding that this love overflows and extends to all. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” and “your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30-31). In it’s everyday, practical sense, love is willing the good of the other.
Practice and cultivate these at least as much as you cultivate your physical prowess, and you will not fail to notice a profound change in your mind, body, and spirit fitness. You may even, by God’s grace, experience salvation from hell.
Imperium Armorum Walking Stick Self-Defense Week 2: Mortality, Sparring and Movement
Note: For the remainder of the month and ongoing there is a 25 Push-up penalty each time you drop your walking stick.
The Pledge of Allegiance and Student Pledge (2 mins)
The Wheel Mettle Drill. 100 strikes vs. air with each hand — see video — 200 total (5 mins).
Sparring. Put on headgear and use padded weapons. Those training solo, attack your heavy bag with a variety of strikes from all angles. If you do not have a heavy bag, hang a thick piece of rope from a tree limb or other object and strike that instead. No excuses. If you are able, install a pool noodle training arm to insure that you are hitting as realistic an enemy as possible (20 mins).
This week’s constitutional. Set timer and complete as many circuits as possible of the following — striking with walking stick throughout!
Scramble or Vault over obstacle
Scramble under obstacle
Step-up
Jump-down to Shoulder Roll
Log Walk
Long Jump
Agility Sprint
Cool Down (3 mins)
Spiritual Training: The Three Theological Virtues (13 mins) Walk and discuss.
Total: 60 mins
Imperium Armorum WALKING STICK SELF-DEFENSE Week 1: Introduction
~ COMPLETE THIS AT LEAST TWICE THIS WEEK ! ~
Pledge of Allegiance and Student Pledge (2 mins)
The Wheel Mettle Drill. 100 strikes vs. air with each hand — see video — 200 total (5 mins).
Basic striking and blocking combinations. Those training solo, attach a pool noodle training arm to your heavy bag and practice blocking the arm and coming back with a strike that flows naturally (20 mins).
This week’s constitutional. Complete 25 each (20 mins)
Knuckle Push-ups (holding stick in both hands)
Help-up Squats (each man holding end of a stick — if training solo, attach stick to stationary object)
Jackknifes (with wrist waggles)
Plank Rows 45° (center of stick attached to rope or chain)
Lunges (6 each direction with mix of strikes and waggles )
Get-ups (switching weapon from one hand to the other after each)
Sprints (5 to 10 yards with 2 bayonet strikes at each end)
Walking meditation with stick (13 mins)
Total: 60 mins
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Homily for the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome 11/9/25 – Father Mitch
Readings: Ezekiel 47:1-2, 8-9, 12, Psalm 46:2-3, 5-6, 8-9, 1 Corinthians 3:9c-11, 16-17, John 2:13-22
John 2:13-22 World English Bible
The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 He found in the temple those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, and the changers of money sitting. 15 He made a whip of cords and drove all out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen; and he poured out the changers’ money and overthrew their tables. 16 To those who sold the doves, he said, “Take these things out of here! Don’t make my Father’s house a marketplace!” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will eat me up.”
18 The Jews therefore answered him, “What sign do you show us, seeing that you do these things?”
19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
20 The Jews therefore said, “It took forty-six years to build this temple! Will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he spoke of the temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said.
What is a basilica? A basilica was originally an ancient form of Roman building which served a variety of civic functions, such as holding public courts, official events, and so on. They are huge rectangular buildings ending in a semicircular nave where a judge, official, or authority figure would sit. Today the Catholic church uses the term basilica merely as an honorary title for its most ancient and revered places of worship. The Lateran Basilica was built in the year 324 AD, and it is the oldest basilica in the West.
If St. Paul is correct, and Christ is our foundation, and we are temples of God and he dwells in us, we may wonder if we even need churches, chapels, cathedrals, and basilicas. But then, if our places of worship are of no importance, why did Jesus become so filled with righteous indignation at finding vendors and moneychangers on the temple grounds that he chased them out with a whip of cords? Yes, we are temples of God. But still, where we worship does matter. And our worship space must be kept separate from commerce and government affairs.
Before Christianity, there was no separation between economics, government, and religion. The Pharaoh of Egypt was considered a god-king. Kings in pre-Christian England and Ireland traced their family trees back to their gods. Viking rulers claimed to be descended from their god Odin. In the pre-Christian world, every King was either a god, descended from a god, or the priest of a god. But Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, claimed no governmental power. He was a victim of the empire, not its commander. His throne is in heaven, not on earth, and his kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36).
The dedication of the Lateran Basilica is worthy of a holiday because it was the first basilica built for the express purpose of bringing together under one roof a bishop – the Roman pontiff – and his entire community of Christian faithful. Before that, basilicas were for a mixture of public, civic, and religious uses. In Lateran, for the first time, the only King who would ever be worshipped was the King of the Universe. In Lateran, for the first time, the nave at the far end of the structure would be, not the seat of an official, general or emperor, but the place of honor for an altar and a cross.
Almost two decades ago, in the dark days when I had lost my Christian faith, something called to me to dedicate a space, a little building on my property, to be a place of reverence and worship and to start a charity. Back then it was just a shed. I insulated it, ran electricity, finished the walls, and installed lights. I began to use it for meditation, contemplation, and for spiritual seeking. Twenty years later, it is now St. Barachiel Chapel.
Looking back with my Christian faith regained, I now see that my calling to build the temple and charity was, although much, much smaller in scope, an echo of Noah's call to build the Ark. When I started the project I had no clue what I was doing. All I knew was that I had to do something to make the world a better place, to help people in search of mind, body, and spirit health. Almost twenty years later, I'm still building my little ark in the rain.
This tiny, humble chapel is, like Lateran Basilica and any church, an Ark. Just as Noah's Ark contained all that was needed to restore and repopulate the world, our churches – large and small – bring together all that is needed to build strong people, families and communities, nations and cultures. Just as Noah’s Ark contained the seeds of a new world destroyed by sin and flood, the church of Christ contains the seeds that grow the Kingdom of God in the desolate hearts of men (Luke 17:20-21).